After one year using that brownish layout the time for a change has come.
With over 10,000 subscribers, it’s been a great year. We’re celebrating with a new look, and some changes to make the new design better.
If you’re reading this in your RSS reader, please click through onto the site to see the new look. Let me know what you think of it!
I needed to improve the usability of the site by making navigation easier and directing visitors to the appropriate parts of the site, also i felt it was too busy.
Also i was really trying to validate the HTML of the site, so its now more valid with couple of errors here and there.
Anyways, we are still adjusting the new layout, so you may find some glitches. Feel free to report us about any problem you might have or if you have suggestions or critics as well. We’d love to hear from you.
On the other hand, we are planning to publish a new series of for WordPress designers with amazing hacks to tweak your blog as you need, new resources, ideas and inspiration.
New writers are Welcomed!
As you may know, we are looking for talented and professional writers and authors. If you think that you are one of themc, send us your ideas at info[at]noupedotcom.
Big Thanks goes to:
I would like to thank all of you for your great suggestions and contributions, we wouldn’t make it without you.
Also i owe a lot of thanks to the great blogs in the same niche as this one. Some of the best are Vandelay Design, CSSGlobe, CSSDrive, Freelancefolder, Wefunction, DesignFloat, justcreativedesign, Design Flavr, Six Revisions, SmashingMagazine, Abduzeedo, Problogdesign, DavidHellmann ifohdesigns.
Special thanks goes to Chris Coyer, David Walsh for helping me with the DevSnippets small widget at the right column here, i wanted to get the direct link to the source articles and couldn’t do it without their help.
Great Sponsors
I want to say thank you to all our great sponsors for helping keep NOUPE running at full steam.
So what would like to see more?
Well, it is your decision. Since we wouldn’t be able to do it without you, which is why we would like you to decide what you want to see more on NOUPE.
So, what do you think? Thoughts, comments? I’d love to hear them all!
i liked the old one …
I like both but this one is much soft and cleaner.
I would like to see more posts about WordPress theme hacks and techniques.
Good job
Dude I think it looks awesome. More modern, clean, fresh and alive
I love the new design!! Very cool. Will you do a tutorial on how you did it?
the thing that matters is that they are both (old and new) useful. I was wondering something, for the design news section is there a plugin to simply accept them and automatically write them in the sidebar?
I still think the body should be centered
I gotaa be honest, ALL of your sites are over styled. You basically make CSS retarded by over using it just because you can use it for so many things. On the contrary though, I like your consistent use of serif fonts. It’s not too common with sites in your realm and you’ve seemed to have done a good job on this design and the previous
Looks smooth! And actually i did not like the old design
I love the logo! 
I view it in a RSS feed reader so this is probably the first and last time I’ll see the new design. The design is alright, not spectacular but not crap either. The biggest thing to keep in mind is that content is still king.
Looks great Noura! I love how you’ve used a similar color scheme, and thanks for the thanks!
I much prefer this.
Hey thank you all for the comments, I’m really happy you liked the new design, I’m working on a few issues and the suggestions are always welcomed.
@Cosmo,
I’m glad you liked the old theme, but it was time to go with a new design that is not busy as the old one.
@boogie,
I am glad you find this site useful. As for the plugin there is an amazing plugin called TDO Mini Form, you can use it to allow users submit their news and then call it in your sidebar.php file. Let me know if you need help with it.
@Nouman,
I have centered the layout. Thanks for the suggestion
@Michael Martin,
Thanks for the feedback. I have used a lightly different color scheme, wanted to feel the change and keep the identity.
Anyway, let me know if you find any glitches. I will try to write tuts on how to hack your WordPress theme to apply some nice features.
Bye, bye unique layout that actually made Noupe stand out from the crowd.
Congratulations on the new look. It’s really different from the old one. I like the new centered-layout!
I prefer the old one, but this one looks more organized. Anyway, willing to visit daily
All the best!
Looks Great. I agree about the comment section though.
I think the point of a site about css and design technique is supposed to “overstyled” so I like it. That way you can see what is possible.
Love the site. It’s on my daily list. Thanks
no,i prefer the old one.
the LOGO and the background image seems not so good
@Jordan,
The old one really was feeling quite old. The markup is almost the same as the old design, i just worked on the backgrounds, colors and alignments.
I’m glad to have a new look out now!
@Jacob, Thanks for your feedback. A new design can be a lot of fun to work on.
I liked the new one more, but this one looks good as well!
Looking good! I liked the old one too, but this one looks cleaner and more organized. I still find the footer section is awesome!
Thanks for the link btw! always appreciated!
Color scheme is nice and easy on the eyes, but there are some nagging design issues. Why is the logo slapped on and not integrated w/the header more? Both the logo and the tagline appear very low res. The main nav screams smashing mag to me as well.
Just knit-picking, but thats my 2 cents. Love your content, I appreciate it!
congrats on the new look! Looking good!
Hey Noura, really digging the new design. You shouldn’t be thanking me, you are the one who works your butt off to put out quality posts, pretty much daily.
But, thank you for the mention, and good luck!
-Matt
Congrats for your new look, it’s really nice!
I liked the old layout too…but I must admit it is a trade off I am willing to make for your better organization.
Good stuff.
The design is completely broken in IE6. I guess someone wasn’t thinking cross-browser compliant when they coded it, eh? It’s also somewhat off in Opera as well.
I really like the new design, much much cleaner and the sidebar clutter has been reduced a lot (but we all know this is like keeping a room tidy… eventually could be cluttered again :).
I’m reading from work and unfortunately we use IE6 here by policy so as the above comment mentioned the look&feel has some problems. Anyway, I don’t blame you for not trying to support the old browser… I guess that like some other design site I read, in your stats the amount of users using browsers older than FF2-3, IE7 or Opera 9 is minimal.
Who cares about ie6, designers should stop supporting IE6, only a small percentage of your audience is still on IE6.
I love the new design. Good job with the header.
the header looks like it should have a background which failed to load.
And the logo looks like it was done in ms paint… what’s up with those jaggies?
Looks good Noura! I really like that you kept the identity and just freshened it up. And thanks for the mention.
It looks more organised now I think, cleaner and easier to use. Bravo.
Great new look! The haze around the logo is the only thing that I am not sure about.
Like the new look. Well done
I really like the new look, it’s really soft and clean.
Also, thanks for the recommendation of TDO Mini Form. I’ve been wanting to add user submissions to Arbenting but didn’t really know where to start.
I agree that the old design might have been a “bit” busy but still nice. I’m not really sure what it about the new design, but something just doesn’t seem right.
hehe, that’s better
was the texture supposed to cover the background of the header originally? cos a few sites have screenshots of the header without the background.
looks much better with the consistent background, and the logotype is nice now too, I didn’t mind the diagonal one, I just thought the jaggies looked funny, still very nice.
It looks more organized. I like the way you use the transparent.
I like the old logo than the new one.
You kept the character of the old one & made it cleaner & much more readable. Liked it & congrats.
it looks cool.looks clean too.keep it up
[A suggestion:]
Give the publishing date (of the article) some more breathing space. It is now standing to close to the Leftside. Give it a margin-left of 10px.
[/End suggestion]
Love the content, keep up the cool work!!
Great redesign, love it! It’s head and shoulders above the last version, which was getting a bit cluttered. This version is clean, spacious, and the manilla/looseleaf paper bg gives a subtle feeling of a scratchpad or folder for all things web-related.
Keep it up, looking forward to more great articles.
J
You could also update the favicon.
Good luck
Hi, sorry could you delete my spamy comment above I thought I was posting in the “post news” form
Congratulations on the new design
@Noupe it really looks fantastic now, thanks for centering it.
I like the new design, but there’s a small adjustment that can still be made to further improve the readability of your content. The length of some of your lines in the primary container are 110+ characters. I haven’t seen any studies that recommend using over 95 characters. In fact, many suggest using somewhere in the neighborhood of 55-75. If you think about your standard Word document, (with the default margins set) your text spans 7.5 inches across the page. That same page at 72dpi on the web is the equivalent of a 540 pixel wide container. Your container is nearly 30% larger.
Personally I love it. I just love the structure and the new style is so easy on the eye. Impressive stuff!
nice redesign work! definitely less cluttered than the old version! just wanted to make you aware of the fact that your bullets on the “About” page are outside the main content area in FF3.
Keep up the good work!
Love the redesign, much prefer it centered. As mentioned, not sure about the weird fog around the logo. Also, the top two horizontal banners should be sacrificed (or moved to the right) for more white space and clarity - you got enough sponsors on the right
Neat! Much better than the old one, i think!!
The content on this site is truly invaluable. I’ve gotten some really great tips here! ^__^ This new design is a huge step in the right direction…
However, I’ve always been turned off by the ads intermingled with the content. Sometimes I can’t tell where the article/content begins. This is amplified by the lack of padding for the text. I think because there’s a great deal of information present, the text should have more breathing room and perhaps the colors could use a contrast bump-up. It still feels cramped.
Otherwise, congratulations on the new roll out of this design and DevSnippets!
The new style by itself is clean and fresh. Unfortunately or fortunately, (depending upon your goal), it makes the colors of the advertising even more annoying than the dark color background did. If this annoyance gets you more revenue, great. However,readers might be distracted from the content and turned away from the design.
Thanks everyone for your feedback about the new design.
I am working on some of your suggestions and hopefully all will be set next week.
@Matt, @Stefan Vervoort, @Jon Phillips, @QVectors, @Andreas, @Steven Snell, @Jon Aizlewood, @liam, @NaldzGraphics, @Umut, @Angie Bowen, @Paul, @Vin Thomas
Thank you all for you nice compliments, i am glad you like it
All too well do I know, how a fresh coat of paint feels and looks! It’s fantastic, Congrats on a great job!! camxso
I like old one too.. but this one also Good. I like this one tag cloud color (red), it’s perfect to match with background texture.
hey there again. is it correct to stop caching the miniforms pages by writing ‘/tdo-mini-forms/’ in the rejected URI’s field in the Super Cache menu?
nice job … keep up …and devsnippets are one of my favorites
wait, wait. i just figured it out. i just have to write for example ‘/news/’ like in your case. thanks
@boogie,
I am glad you figured it out
i posted this before but because of the anti-spam it didn’t show up.
->
piece of cake to install it but a little bit harder to use it properly. now, the problems for which I’d like some counseling are the following:
1. I’d like the so called ‘guest posts’ to be published somewhere in the second column. I believe I know how to customize it in css+xhtml but I don’t know how to make the design articles to be posted here.
2. I don’t want the title of the submission to send the visitor on a post page for example mysite.com/category/”submitted title of the article”/, I want it to send him on the direct link.
i’m looking forward to reading your advice.
@boogie,
You can achieve this by assigning the guest posts to certain category, you can do this in the Tdo Form admin area.
For example, the category will be “News” and its id # is “6″.
Now in your theme folder, open the template file that you want to add the guest posts in, and add the code below and don’t forget to assign the correct id of the category the guest posts belongs to.
<?php query_posts('cat=49&showposts=5'); ?> <?php if (have_posts()) : while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>Tdo Form allows you to create custom fields, you can create a new custom field and give it a key value, for example “direct_url”. Please make sure that spelling is correct when you call it in your theme.
Now open your template file and instead of the regular link for the title which is:
Replace it with the custom field value, to be something like this:
I like the new theme.
Its clean, simple and not Busy.
Really though, with the info you share on your site you would still have my attention just with the WP default theme, lol.
Thank you!
Jeromy
Big improvement on the old design, it was starting to feel stale in my opinion! Just remember, keep tweaking the design as time goes by, keep experimenting and it’ll keep getting better.
Thanks 4 the thanks
paper, i lov it!
Congratulations! The new site design looks fantastic, a great improvement!!!
And congrats on passing 10,000, I’m sure there’ll be an extra 0 in there before you know it
dude, no offence but your template looks like crap in ie 6.